Sustainable eating with Anna Jones

I have every single one of Anna Jones’ cookbooks on my shelf, but her latest – One Pot, Pan, Planet – is undoubtedly her best yet. It’s not just my opinion – at the time of writing, One has spent 13 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list. It’s a triumph of talent over TV tie-ins and the era of the celebrity chef, as Anna does her wonderful thing with food relatively quietly, sharing recipes in The Guardian and on her social media channels, running courses and events, and writing her beautiful, thoughtful books, gathering thousands of fans who love her style of simple, accessible, plant-based cooking along the way.

One was published in March, at the end of a year of living under pandemic restrictions, a year that has seen many of us staying at home and cooking a lot more than usual. Anna admits she was worried about launching One during a national lockdown, but also reflects that ‘people were probably very bored of their own recipes by that point, they wanted to cook something else’.

Her latest book has been a big project, planned long before the pandemic started. ‘It’s about three years since I first started thinking about this book, and of course, I couldn’t have imagined what would be happening in the world when it came to be published,’ Anna says. ‘This book has taken longer to write than any of my others. Not that I’ve given previous books less attention, it’s just how I work really – but this is a culmination of so much work, and not just mine but also lots of other people who put their creativity into it, so it was nerve-wracking to finally see it published.’

A lockdown launch

Anna quickly discovered that launching in lockdown opened up new ways to connect with fans and followers. ‘It’s been amazing how I’ve managed to still connect with people and run events during lockdown, and perhaps people who wouldn’t have been able to come along to events in London or at festivals have been able to tune in, but in a different way,’ she says. ‘I have missed going out and meeting people, but I really think I’ve valued the connection and talking online to people who aren’t my family – it’s been even more precious than it was before.’

For many of us, lockdown changed our lifestyle, bringing changes to the way we cook and eat that were mostly positive. More cooking from scratch, better food management, and with no commuting, travel or long hours at the office, more people had the opportunity to eat together as a family every day. ‘We have been cooking differently,’ agrees Anna. ‘In the first lockdown we moved to my parents’ house just outside of London as we were having our house renovated, so that was always the plan, but we didn’t expect to be living there in lockdown circumstances! But it was really nice, our son got to spend three and a half months in constant contact with his grandparents, which was so special. I was cooking for five of us every day, and we started eating dinner all together, which was something we’d always aspired to do, but between my work and my husband’s work and getting our son Dylan back from nursery, it wasn’t always possible to get around the table together. But during lockdown we have managed to do that now, and that’s a change I’m definitely going to keep – we are always going to sit down to eat together and try to eat the same thing. That’s the aim anyway, as sometimes our son won’t eat what we are eating! I’m hoping that will change in time though.’

Creative cooking

One is full of Anna’s trademark modern plant-based food, but it’s also focused on cooking more sustainably, wasting less, cooking with energy-efficiency in mind, and eating seasonally to reduce our impact on the planet. Anna says that the food shortages in the first lockdown opened her eyes to the complexity of our food supply. ‘I quite enjoyed the challenge of ingredients being limited during lockdown,’ she says. ‘During the first one, when we couldn’t get basics like flour or eggs, I never thought there would be a day when I couldn’t get a bag of flour. It really shone a light on the intricacy of all the things involved our food system, from the farmers, to the packers and the transporters, and actually what a miraculous, complex process it is. It gave me a completely different appreciation of food and I quite enjoyed it. We have been so spoilt, being able to go to a supermarket or a farmers’ market or a local shop and just picking up absolutely anything we want to eat, and often almost on autopilot, sleepwalking through the process and not actually appreciating food for the amazing, life-giving stuff that it is.

‘I found it an interesting time in terms of cooking, not only for me but also for those people making my recipes, as they were having to learn and swap and go beyond the recipe, which is the type of cooking I enjoy myself and try to instil into people. It’s the process you have to go through to become a good cook, not just a good cook of recipes. That’s when the magic happens, when there’s that creativity in the kitchen. I do think lockdown has improved people’s kitchen confidence because they’ve had to make three meals a day. It’s been really positive in many ways, and I think we’re all better cooks because of it.’